Our October meeting was phenomenal as we welcomed Duggan McDonnell, author of Drinking the Devil’s Acre. He spoke with OCBC member and fellow author, Dave Stolte, about bartending at the Starlight Room, house blending spirits and straw tasting your drinks. The book is amazing, definitely pick one up or add it to your Amazon wishlist for the holidays! OCBC members in attendance were able to get their copies signed and enjoy several drinks from the book.

Drinking the Devil’s Acre

The 320 Main team put out five super tasty cocktails that are all a part of San Fransisco cocktail history. Here are the recipes, courtesy of Duggan:

Our next meeting will be on Monday, November 2nd at 7pm in Newport Beach.

For our upcoming meeting the OCBC is going to dive into the world of wine like never before. A deep understanding and analysis of a wines balance and complexity is perfectly suited to the world of cocktails and spirits. Join us as Dan Oliver of Red O, Joel Anthony Caruso of Pizzeria Ortica, and Matt Ellingson of Club 33 pull back the curtain on the way Sommelier candidates analyze wine blind. It is not a parlor trick and it is not what you think. Anyone can learn the process. And the best part about it is that you are guaranteed to have a more fulfilling drinking experience along the way!

As always, to maintain the quality of service, presentation, space, food and drink we have a limited capacity for the meeting and must insist on RSVPs. Please get your RSVP in early and send it to info@bartenderscabinet.com. Let us know if something comes up so we can make your spot available to someone else if you can’t make it.

We were back at our regular format for September, thank you to the amazing Emily Delicce for hosting our meeting at the Boathouse Collective. It was a perfect setting to taste through the Few Spirits line-up and learn about this great distillery.

Our educational topic for the evening was a hands-on overview of herbs from OCBC member and resident farmer’s market expert, Dave Lieberman! We slapped, tore, sniffed & tasted a great variety of herbs from a local Vietnamese market, tried & true favorites and crazy fish-smelling exotics!

Our next meeting will be on Monday, October 5th at 7pm in Seal Beach. We have a very special guest, bartender and author, Duggan McDonnell. His new book, Drinking the Devil’s Acre was just released and he joins us for a Q&A, led by our very own Dave Stolte. They’ll discuss the subject of his new book- San Fransisco & her cocktail history. Our sponsor is Encanto Pisco so you know we’ll be having some tasty drinks!

As always, to maintain the quality of service, presentation, space, food and drink we have a limited capacity for the meeting and must insist on RSVPs. Please get your RSVP in early and send it to info@bartenderscabinet.com. Let us know if something comes up so we can make your spot available to someone else if you can’t make it.

Thanks to Beam Suntory- our August meeting was one for the books! We got to hang out with our friends from USBG San Diego and USBG So Cal at the super cool Beam Suntory headquarters in Irvine. We did round-table tasting & educations on Irish Whiskey, Bourbon and Scotch led by the great guys at Beam. Every awesome bottle of booze you could imagine was available for tasting & testing, OCBC members tinkered at the bar throughout the day taking breaks only to eat at the Kogi truck! All guests left with a generous backpack of goodies, and a wonderful appreciation for our friends at Beam Suntory.

July was a special treat, we were hosted by the wonderful Ecco Pizza Shoppe at the Anaheim Packing District. We tasted and got the cool story of Loft & Bear Artisanal Vodka. This award-winning vodka is straight out of downtown LA and it’s distiller is one rad dude.

Hello BarCab! Sorry for the radio silence- we mixed things up a bit this summer with some great meetings & events. Hope you were able to join us for one or more. We learned a lot and had tons of fun- wrap-ups from each month are coming.

To kick things off in June, OCBC participated in a Negroni Week launch party at Mesa in Costa Mesa. The event was sponsored by Infinium Spirits and was a fundraiser for Inspire Artistic Minds, a great charity that supports educational goals for the hospitality industry. OCBC members were out in full force, including the showcased bars: Little Sparrow, Social, Broadway, Mesa, 320 Main, plus our friends from the LBBC- Sky Room & the Stache! Thank you to Mesa for hosting a really fun event and the great food.

The winning bartender was Corbin Brown from Little Sparrow with his super delicious tiki-inspired Sandy’s Peaches. He won a trip to Tales of the Cocktail so I’m sure hand crushing all that ice was worth it, go Corbin!